The CPG industry will see more change in the next 10 years than it has in the last 40. The evidence is clear, the performance of incumbents has been steadily declining. Why is this happening? Simple answer: how consumers behave and what they want has changed.

3%

of the top-25 CPG companies have captured sales growth.

97%

of sales growth has been achieved by the small, nimble CPG players.

Thanks to the ubiquity of digital channels, consumers are now hyper-connected to their peers and other influencers who increasingly guide their choices and alert them to new products. What’s more, behaviors have transformed. Better informed than ever, consumers know what they want and how to get the best deal. They also demand and expect a fast, personalized service. As a result, larger monolithic brand propositions are no longer winning. Focused, born-digital smaller brands with targeted appeal are rapidly moving in front.

The impact for CPG companies is clear. They must evolve to operate in a world that’s moving faster all the time and embrace the fast model. Doing so will enable them to innovate at speed, effectively partner throughout their ecosystems to deliver differentiated products and services, and be agile enough to respond to fast-changing consumer expectations.

Explore our trends

Our 2018 Accenture Technology Vision for Consumer Goods and Services focuses on three of the five trends identified in the cross-industry report that have the greatest impact and allow CPG companies to become modern and connected enterprises.

Frictionless Business

Today’s consumers expect a frictionless experience, and CPG companies must deliver at an unprecedented scale, across traditional and digital channels–spanning distribution, delivery, after sales and so on. To become a frictionless business requires an open IT architecture that can operate at scale to increase channels, reach and speed.

Data Veracity

To operate a truly connected enterprise, CPG companies should treat data as an asset. As relationships with consumers becomes more personalized, the data collected becomes a source of competitive advantage. This means the veracity of the data becomes ever more critical.

Citizen AI

CPG companies seeking to capitalize on AI’s potential to enable personalization, responsiveness and agility, will need to take responsibility for how AI will behave in the real world. AI can only ever be as effective as the data used to train it.